They Were Dumballers

A few highlights from the last five years of dumballing to give you a taste of what you can expect on a typical dumball rally. Obviously the true madness of it all is impossible to capture - but here is 2minutes that comes pretty close.

Diary of a fundraiser

On Friday afternoon, I was sat at work, and I looked at our miserbale funraising total - just £220. Now as we all know this year we have set the dumball a ridiculous challenge - for all of us to try and raise £1000 (each!). Other charity rallys have done it - and we want to be one of the best, so we thought, why not?

Now I must admit it was highly embrassing to look at our page, with such a low amount, this close to the dumball. And so I decided to take our own advice. I sat down, logged onto facebook, and sent 50 tailor made messages to friends, family, acquaintances, and people that I just happen to be mates with on facebook (you know the sort). It took me about an hour, but it was well worth it. By the end of the day I had raised an extra £650. Now we're talking...and it was so easy! I just said hello, asked how they were doing, added some comments specific to them, then hit them with it: I'm targeting 50 of the most generous people I know, and asking them all for £20. But here's the best bit...some gave £30, some £50...some £100! Amazing. I urge you all to give this a try, if you haven't, your not making life easy on yourself - it was so simple.

The target we have set ourselves is ridiculously high - but everyone has hundreds of friends on facebook - so lets tap them up for cash...and it's a great way to catch up with people!

Peace

Muzza, DUMBALL HQ

To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail....

With just 40 days to go, here's what you dumballers should be getting your noggins round....

Your Car

Buying your car is a magnificent moment, but don’t forget, we need your car reg details when you have them. Use the link from your personalised members service e-mail. If you can’t find it don’t worry - another one will be sent to you in the next 48 hours.

Remember to send your V5 ownership slip away as soon as you physically can. If you don’t receive your full registration documents in the post before we leave you could find yourselves in all kinds of trouble at the Montenegrin border. Make sure you have plenty of stuff to bribe people with!

For your insurance, you don’t need anything special – after all you are not taking part in a rally – just an organised driving holiday. We recommend Aviva’s short term insurance- you can pay for just 7 days worth. You won’t be covered for Kosovo – but you can purchase insurance at the border – for around 30 euros. Another option is to take out a 12 month policy, and then cancel it when you get home, within the 14 day money back clause. That way you pay nothing, unless you crash, in which case you’ll end up paying for 2 months insurance (on direct line).

Where we are meeting: the Brighton Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony is now finalised and we can reveal that it will take place right on the beach front at Bar 211, The Honeyclub. We have special permission to meet and park our cars on the sea front on Madeira Drive, Brighton, BN2 1EN (at the end nearest to the Pier) where registration will take place between 3pm-6pm. To register you must arrive at this time – get there extra early to make sure you don’t mess this bit up!!! After the opening speeches, we will make the short walk, en mass, to the party (with mystery celebrity guests) which you can invite everyone you know to. We will be selling tickets on the door – all proceeds to the TCT.

At 10pm prompt (ish) we will line up our vehicles on the seafront and the starting flag will be waved. We will then drive in one huge convoy to Folkestone. From this point on, you will have your drivers manual, which will guide you through the week, step by step – so don’t worry about what happens next, but so your psyched up, we’ll be overnighting in Folkstone before catching an incredibly early Eurotunnel train to the continent. Woohoo!

Ditching your car and getting home

We arrive in Sicily on Friday 10^th September and have 2 nights accommodation there. The award ceremony is on the Saturday night at an exclusive venue. Food is provided and transport to and from our hotel. On Sunday 12^th September we have organised for our cars to be handed over to a local mechanic at our hotel (lucky man)– that’s if you want to cut loose quickly and easily. If not – you can make you own arrangements to ditch you wheels.

Dumball 5: The Godfather - All You Need to Know (well...some of it)

Many of you have been e-mailing HQ with a host of questions about our upcoming adventure, so we thought it might be a good idea to post some of the answers to the most pressing questions.

Q) Where do I book flights back from?
A) The dumball is finishing in Palermo. There are many options when it comes to flying home - check out the forum, where people have been discussing routes.

Q) Can I add another person to my team?
A) Sorry it's now too late for that - accommodation is booked

Q) Where are our fund-raising packs?
A) Right now? Sat in front of us, here at DHQ - about to wing their merry way to you!

Q) I want my significant other to come to the awards ceremony in Palermo...is that OK?
A) Yes of course. tickets are 40 euros, which includes a meal and some bubbly. If you want to book a room at the hotel we'll all be staying at, get in touch with rick@dumball.org

Q) How can I contain my excitement?
A) Try drinking a cup of tea - or taking a cold shower

Dumball The Movie

Check out this movie made by Suzanne Koneful and Angela Sharp in 2007 - it's a great tribute to Adam Horn, and will give you an idea of what you're letting yourself in for!

WATCH THE MOVIE

dumball pledges to raise £100,000 for the Teenage Cancer Trust

2010 is going to be a huge year for the dumball - we are turning it into a fundraising powerhouse, all in aid of a fantastic cause - the Teenage Cancer Trust, who we have pledged, on your behalf, to raise £100,000 for. How are we going to do that? Well, we won't lie - you've got a bit of work to do.


HOW TO RAISE £1000

Basically, you need to get 50 people to give you £20, and why should they sponsor you? Well, because you have just committed to doing one of the stupidest challenges you’ll ever undertake that’s why (see description above). Don’t worry, you are not alone.  as we speak a special fundraising pack is winging its way to you with more details about the appeal. And we’ve made it even easier for you.

YOUR FUNDRAISING MICROSITE

This year we are working in conjunction with Virgin Money who have set you all up with your own all singing, all dancing microsites. Check them out here.

QUICK – WE HAVEN’T GOT MUCH TIME!

You have over 100 days to raise as much as you can. Here are five steps for raising that £1000 (per person remember – not per team!):

1)      CONTACT PEOPLE PERSONALLY
Don’t just send a mass e-mail pointing to your microsite, call or e-mail people personally. There’s over 100 days left until the dumball. Just contact one person a day and kindly ask them for £20, they are a million times more likely to respond. Well done, you’ve raised £2000!

2)      ASK YOUR BOSS FOR COMMERICIAL SPONSERSHIP
We don’t care if your car is amblazoned with your work logo – milk ‘em for all they are worth!

3)      GET THE LOCAL PRESS INVOLVED
Once your car is done contact the local rag. They’ll love a good charity story with a nice picture of some nutters dressed like idiots. We'll post a link to a press release soon - watch this space. If you need contacts for your local press – just ask, we have a database of them. E-mail Captain Jess Holiday: jess@dumball.org

4)      PIMP YOUR CAR UP, AND DRIVE IT AROUND TOWN SHACKIG BUCKETS
You will get loads of TCT stickers in your fundraising pack to help you do this – it’s a must for August bank holiday, which we will declare, NATIONAL DUMBALL DAY!

5)      HOLD  A FUNDRAISING PARTY
The easiest and most fun way to get money off your friends. Charge on the door – have a raffle – you’ll raise tons!

Ok that’s it for now. We know you can all do this – it’s easy right?
DUMALL HQ

Pictures from an old friend....

Just when we thought that Dumball One couldn't possibly still be going - having left it in the hands of a british ex-pat on the Russian border with a head gasket hanging on for dear life...here it is!

It's new owner seems to be getting plenty of miles out of it, and has sent us pictures from Russia and the Ukraine, with himself, his Russian wife and his children enjoying the luxury drive. Glad to see its EXACTLY as we left it. I'll be honest, when I first laid eyes on these photos, I didn't know if I shoud be jealous, angry - or proud. After much thought, I opted for the latter. We used to saying RIP to our cars when we leave them behind, but Dumball One never gives up lightly - and these pictures are testement to that fact.

Keep on 'ballin!

Our visas were only valid for one day...

Well, once again most people are back in blighty, nursing week long hangovers and having the Dumball blues at work.

As far as I know, no one is driving back this year (good luck getting through Russia without Rob! Although they'd probably get a ferry straight from Helsinki to Rostock or something if they were), and everyone I spoke to would have left as off about half an hour ago. If anyone is still out there keeping the dream alive do leave a comment!

So congrats to everyone that made it, congrats to Rick and Nick for pulling a tour de force and the incredible feat of getting all safely into and out of Russia, and congrats to those who truly made the Dumball their own, and took everyone along with them for the ride.


These are the winners of the Dumball Awards 2009.

Some people got Spot Prizes - these were awards invented along the way, for those who surprised us, they got t-shirts and medals. The real awards and trophies are highly sought after and contested accolades - stuff of legend amongst Dumball folk.

Spot prize: The Challenge Masters (for taking the most ridiculous photo):


The Festering Welshmen - for filling their tank with nothing but their crackers on.

Spot prize: The On Tour Charity Collectors (for collecting money whilst on the Dumball):

Daisy Does Dumball - they collected £500!

Spot prize - The World's Most Horrible Team (for relentless twatitude and idiocy):

Frank and Harry from the Rogue Traders

Spot Prize - The Alain Prost Award (for stunt-driving):


The Driver Alan Frost from the Happy Hour Hotrods.

The Grand Master Cash Award (for fundraising):

Large Hardon Collider - they raised £4,500!

The Shitty Shitty Bang Bang Shield (for the first team to lose a car):

The Dukes - they didn't even make it to Colchester!

The Dame Edna Award (for fancy dress):

Blackbeard's Delight - they never took it off! (even while sleeping in their car)

The Blind Bat Trophy for (talentless map reading):

Francis Gregory Smalley - current holder of the trophy, he was happy to get it again, but at least this time he really did deserve it!

The Tim Westwood Baseball Cap (for blingin' you car):

The Putt Pirates - you really could play golf on it!


The Ben Crean Prize for Peace (and International Relations):

Rob Hewitt - we couldn't have got into Russia without him. Literally.

Ben's dad flew out to give the award and to remind us all of the great man that was Ben Crean. Very moving - RIP Ben.


Here's a video of Ben which we wanted to play at the awards ceremony but couldn't due to technical difficulties... http://youtube.com/watch?v=TA8_yfP8Uzc It features him undertaking one of the challenges on the '07 Rally.

The Adam Horn Bling Bling Trophy (for simply being cool):

Jake Manning of the Strangelets! For rousing motivational speeches and an astounding ability to chill out (man).


The Adam Horn award was presented by our very own Daddy of the Dumball - someone who really gets it, does a lot of great work for charity (but does like to talk about it) and makes the Dumball a special place to be: Adam's dad, Mr. Colin Horn himself:


Here's a video of Adam's thoughts about the Dumball which we wanted to play at the awards...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vo9BmIiBeGw

And last but in absolutely no way least, the coveted
Spirit of The Dumball Monkey:


This is the highest honour you can receive. It is given to group or individual who shows the most passion, courage, and madness along the way. This year it went to Rob Hewitt for his epic border crossing skills, mean he is the first Dumballer in history to do the Ben Crean/Monkey double. Well done Rob.

If anyone has any video footage of The Monkey's incredible entrance please comment here or let me know!

---

So there you have it. An epic Dumball. Thanks to everyone who's been reading, everyone who came, everyone who donated. Thanks to the Russian border guards who eventually let us into their country - at 5am! Let's do it all again next year - following the footsteps of our founding fathers...?


Sudders

The Dumball 2009 comedown

Shamelessly stolen from last year, but here are a few things to get used to again:

* Wearing socks. And pants. Cleans ones at that.
* Eating.
* Driving with the windows up.
* Not having to herd at least 30 cats before every decision.
* Rain.
* Not having €70 fill ups twice a day.
* Not having your squadron at the end of a walkie ready to solve (or at least throw money at) any problem.
* Not having any money left.
* Not being pink on one side depending on which side of the car you've been sat on.
* Not being able to raise an instant smile and a wave from anyone by driving a strangely decorated car through the centre of the busiest town you can find.
* Sleep. Lots of it.
* Being in the same bed (not to mention country) for two nights in a row.
* Not talking filth and bollocks constantly.
* Not having the power of 100 amazing comrades on tap at all times.
* It being about being there, not getting there.
* Not talking in cliquey in-jokes the whole time.
* Talking about getting into Russia... (or not...)
* Not having a partially naked, drunk man wearing a pink bra to 'help' with any occasion.
* Tipping waiters
* Not having to drink your way through a hangover
* Having people pronounce your surname correctly.

As a finale to the week, I'd like to thank Rick and Nick for inviting me along on their annual holiday again. Much fun was had, many friends reacquainted, and many more friends made. Next year, I promise to be slightly more prepared.

Love you guys!

B.

Helsinki... and its over!

102 Dumballers started, 36 cars headed towards Colchester, 101 Dumballers finally made it to Helsinki (Tom sadly found his inability to keep water or food down too much and took a sensible early flight home to get some treatment.. (hes doing ok) so here we are before the procession to the awards night

The awards ceremony!

The awards ceremony was last night, and it was absolutely awesome.

Rick and Nick seriously raised the bar on the venue - it was an old almost castle in the middle of Helsinki. We had booked one of the main conference rooms there which was exclusively ours until 10pm. After then, the whole place turned into an enormous nightclub.

The ceremony went really well. I'll leave a full rundown of the awards to Sudders, but suffice to say there were plenty of winners all around (and all of them well deserved)

Once the nightclub opened properly, there was a substantial invasion by absolutely stunning Finnish women. Much mingling later, and it seems that several of the cars were given away, and everyone was having a bloody amazing time. I could even be found 'throwing some shapes' on the dance floor throughout the evening :)

We're now in Helsinki airport, waiting for our flight. Free wi-fi really is awesome :)

Once again I'd like to personally thank Rick and Nick for all the organisation that they have done for this, and previous years Dumballs. I'm already looking forward to next year :)

B.

A few photos!

So, here we are.

The Finsish border was a doddle, every single one of us (bar Tom Horn
who has been flown home with man flu [only joking, it looks like he may
have picked up a dodgy infection in Thailand]) made it here eventually.
A few people didn't get into Russia and had to get a ferry from Tallinn
to Helsinki - I'm sure Zubel has blogged about that.

We did over stay our visas by about a hour, but they really weren't
bothered. Anyway, we've got things to do so I let a few pictures do thhe
talking... these are a bit random and rubbish but plenty of fun! We've
got the award ceremony tonight and then most people are off tomorrow
morning so it's all downhill from here.

Dumball 1, signing off for now.

The 'Finnish' Line!

Hotel lobby of the Radisson SAS 'Seaside' hotel.

It appears that everyone is now here. I'm not expecting some of our teams to surface for a good few hours as they didn't get into the hotel until 5am-ish.

Spirits at breakfast are high. At some point we're supposed to hand in our voting forms for the various awards. However, it seems that whilst I was in charge of handing them out and gettnig them put into each of the room welcome packs, I omitted to get one myself. Ah well, I doubt my vote will count much ;)

We decided last night that one of the best candidates for the Practical Joker award is the Estonian government - primarily for building the least interesting car park in all of history. However, there may be other contenders so the awards ceremony tonight will be interesting.

Our plan for today is to clear the car out, and perhaps get in contact with the recycling centre to see what time we can bring it in tomorrow. Our flight is apparently at 2pm, so we should be in Blighty later tomorrow afternoon. From there, we need to figure out how we're getting back from Gatwick :)

B.

3 hours until our visas run out...

Wow. Well, we're back on the road again, after spending less than 12 hours in St. Petersburg.

We eventually arrived at the hotel at 8am, having spent 20 hours on the road. The advance parties had secured us a 2pm check out and were all waiting for us, so we had a quick celebratory beer with breakfast and hit the hay for a few hours zs.

It would obviously be stupid to leave without having a little look around russia, so the departure was pushed back to an unpresidented 6pm. All we have left to do now is get the hell off russian roads and collapse into the welcoming arms of the EU.

So we spent the afternoon experiencing many weird and wonderful forms of transport, namely walking and the metro.

St P is a beautiful city, but the pictures on my phone don't do it justice. And I expect like many in Russia, it is a mental place and a 'fine' place - a number of the group got done for taking photos in the underground.

We had a lovely meal and classic dishes- borsht: sour and lamby (prefer mine) and beef stroganof (i know i can't spel): creamy and rich (spectacular).

We've just heard the may still be a massive wait at the border, but that doesn't bother up as (perhaps stupidly...) we are assuming that we won't actually have any admin problems this time, and Helsinki isn't going anywhere. More to the point, neither are we once we get there...

Some things that happen on the Estonian/Russian border

I'm sat outside the hotel back in Tallinn, after our aborted Russian border crossing attempt. After 10 hours of waiting around it seems that the Estonians weren't happy with our V5 'New Keepers Supplement' and wouldn't let us attempt the Russian border at all. So, we were turned away and had to head the 200 kilometres back to Tallinn.

We hooked up with Raging Horn, The Large Hardon Colliders and the Strangelets to make the journey back to the same hotel that we had left that morning. We finally got back here at 4am and just collapsed onto our beds.

However, we're very philosophical about it. In some ways it's been a fun part of the adventure. We always knew it would be a risk to try to get over the border with limited documentation and in this instance the gamble didn't pay off. However, we did see true Dumball fashion in the holding area with everyone inventing games to keep their spirits high. We also learned a limited amount of Estonian! Apparently 'wah wah wah' means that 5-6 cars can move off, and 'wah wah wah, wah wah wah' means that 6 lorries can move off. I'm almost feeling multilingual!

Our plan for today is to find the ferry port (which shouldn't be a problem because I think it's about 500 metres down the road), and get ourselves onto a ferry to Helsinki. I reckon we'll be arriving there far before the Dumball do - apparently they didn't hit St Petersburg until around 5-6am local time, so just enough time to check into the hotel to have breakfast, then check out!

I'll leave you with a link to some of the frivolity that was occurring in the holding area. We decided that it would be an interesting 'scientific experiment' to try to determing exactly how many people we could fit inside the Manshaft car. Here are the results:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UbRsImWhRM
(it may take a few minutes for Google to finish processing it. be patient if it's unavailable :))

The answer: 24, it seems.

Love to all reading. We'll update later.

B.

To wait or not to wait...

There is no question.

So it appears it works like this: you arrive at Narva, estonian border at about 2pm. Despite knowing we won't get through, we head straight for the border just to have a look. Not much to look at, and not many friendly looks.

"Back."

So back we go, as we knew we would have to. We didn't realise quite how long it would take to get on any further...

Next, you have to find at scrap yard. Well it looks like a scrap yard.

You have to queue to get into the scrap yard, even if you arrive in a 72 wheeled convoy, and stopping to get into the scrap yard means you bring a major highway to a halt. On entry to the scrap yard you have to produce any and all documents you have (one of which has to be your V5) and eventually you get a small metal token.

The small metal token allows you to enter the scrap yard, free up the motorway, and join the REAL queue.

Of course this isn't obvious at first. There's a lot of headless chickening and running around trying to find our two russian speaking comrades and/or english speaking locals. It eventually transpires that the scrap yard is some sort of holding tank because there's not much room at the border itself. Estimated waiting time? 2 to 8 hours. We've been here 10 so far.

So the usual high jinks kicked off- we had a game of 'smallinator' (Frank Smalley asks a series of series questions about ITV1, sweets, Freddy Mercury etc, while we use gummi bears as playing pieces), space hopper headers and vollies and eventually the midlands mobile disco came into it's own and we had a rave off. That passed a few hours.

Every couple of hours 5 cars at a time would be called forward (in crackly muffled Russian, which we eventually deciphed) to swap the small metal token for a small green piece of card.

More crackly russian finally informed us we could go back to the border, nearly 12 hours after we arrived. We're still there now... and have been advised to switch phones off so i'm putting this thing away for a bit.

...riding in The Alliance at the mo and they've only got the V379- the temporary registration document.

"Where is the official document?"
"This is the official document, but it is temporary."
"This is the end of the European Union, this is Russia."
"Can we come in?"
"We will check. Wait."

...
Estonian side:
"Your documents are fine. Proceed."
Lets see what Russia say...

... It appears a few people have given up before the border and headed back to tallinn to get a ferry to 'sinki. We're ploughing on, well, we've been stationary on a bridge at 3am for the last half hour but we're trying to...

... forms forms forms car search forms insurance ... Just one more barrier ...

Oh, the don't like the temporary V5 again...

... And the final four have made it though!

Still waiting

So, we haven't moved in 6 hours, give or take. It does seem like we might move soon.



Sure... Heard that before :)



B.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Waiting for Russia

We're currently queued in a big car park, waiting to be 'processed' to enter Russia. The car park is big, full, and very confusing.



The most important thing: do not get your car out of order.



It's all good.



B.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Dumball One fails to complete...

Well, well, well. This is Gareth. We're not quite sure what he does, but he's british and 'crosses the Russian border quite a lot'.

About 50 miles from the border, he's told us we definately won't be getting in with no V5, in fact we might have problems getting out of Estonia... So Gareth's got himself a new (ish) Shogun and Dumball One is officially out of the (metaphorical) race. We'd been discussing various stratagies and so were more than ready to ditch it but Gareth hadn't and thought we were joking when we just gifted him a car.

And now we're just arriving at the border so it's time for some limbo limbo...

Rumour!

The word on the street is that Dumball One is in Estonia. They may already be in Tallinn by now, but that's unsubstantiated right now.



We're currently in the Hell Hunt bar sampling the 75 different varieties of beer that they have. It's a hard job, but someone has to do it!



B.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device